faces per frame and cubemap

[glass]

Can someone describe to me, in layman's terms, what these 2 options are?
What do they do for the game's visuals?

[Crux]

Cubemap is a textured cube. The sides of that cube contains a pictures of things that currently surrounding your car. The game makes 6 pictures of your surroundings in 6 directions - in front of the car, below the car, from the left of the car and so on. Then the game puts this pictures on your car to make reflections on it.
Faces per frame control in how many direction pictures a being made at the same time. Six faces would mean realtime reflections from all the sides of your car. If you set it to one face per frame your reflections will lag because they will be updated once in a six frames.

[glass]

so If you are not worried about how the environment reflects off of the cars chasis, it is safe to have both of these options set at their lowest value?

[beerland]

if you want 'decent' reflections without a heavy fps hit. Low cubemap and 2 faces per frame is a good setting imo. If you really need more fps (or don't care at all about reflection) you could turn them off completely.

[ThereIs0nly0ne]

Yes, and your performance will improve significantly. If performance is an issue, turn down smoke to the lowest settings as well - there's not a great deal of difference between the highest and lowest smoke settings anyway.

[SMIFFY]

TBH when you're driving you don't notice stuff like this anyway, its only really use for replays imo.